The Intro ride that wasn’t.

05Jul

No, it is not the ride that wasn’t; it certainly was, but the Intro was not quite an intro. Hardy unfortunately suffered a middle-ear infection and I guess his buddies didn’t want to try their first night ride on their own. As I arrived at the stroke of seven as is my habit, I was greeted by just Rudolf and Tobias.

So it was to be an Urban Bash that turned out to be not quite that. I suggested doing our normal UB in reverse and as we rode up Boeing to Piering I asked Rudolf to take the lead since that is his home turf. Instead of carrying on with De Villabois Mareuil, Rudolf suggested going along the Delmas road for about one km and then take a dirt road, which turned out to be not that urban, but real nice riding. Rudolf has obviously been training for his upcoming MTB tour of the UK and at least I, but I think Tobias as well, had to really hang on to keep up. We ended up next to quite a busy road and I was completely at a loss which road that was, despite having lived in Pretoria for half a century. It was only after 1.5 km of guessing that I realised that we were on Garstfontein road on a stretch that I have run dozens of times in decades gone past.

We rode in a south-westerly direction to almost January Masilele (that is Louis Botha for the old-timers) and then parallel to it, Solomon Mahlangu (Hans Strydom) and Van Ryneveld to the End of the World climb, the Airbase wall and back to the Moo Mall for just under 33 km of enjoyment.